The Clock Strikes Twelve (11 page)

Colonel Bostock said, “H’m! What about the clock being wrong?”

“Well, sir, Mr. Paradine was very fussy about that—used to have a man up once a week to wind and set the clocks, until labour got scarce, then he did it himself. The butler says he’d have a fit if any of the clocks was half a minute out. I checked them over myself, and they were all the same, and all dead right.”

“All right, let’s get on. What about the nephews? Let’s see—they went off early too, didn’t they?”

“Yes, sir—at about a quarter to ten.”

“Together?”

“Yes, sir—on bicycles. Mr. Mark, he’s got a service flat in that new block, Birleton Mansions, just as you get into the town. He says he stopped there. Mr. Richard lodges farther on, in Lennox Street. Both of them say they left without seeing Mr. Paradine. Mr. Richard says he didn’t go out again. Mr. Mark says he went for a walk. As a matter of fact the policeman on duty on the bridge says he saw him. It was bright moonlight up to the time the rain came on. He says Mr. Mark passed him, going back in the direction of the River House. He puts the time at 10:20 or so— says he looked at his watch within a few minutes of seeing him, just to see how the time was getting on. I’ve only just had that, so I’ve not had the opportunity of putting it to Mr. Mark. Well, that’s as far as I’ve got with the nephews. Then there’s Mr. and Mrs. Wray. He’s here on business. He and his wife were occupying rooms on different sides of the house.”

Colonel Bostock nodded.

“Marriage broke up. Pity. Surprised he should be staying there. Awkward—very.”

“Well, sir, he says urgent business cropped up, and Mr. Paradine insisted. Government business, I understand—confidential.”

Colonel Bostock nodded again.

“Yes, yes—he’s in with Cadogan. Bomb sights— all that kind of thing. Very able fellow, I’m told.”

“Yes, sir. He wasn’t giving much away—just said he looked in on Mr. Paradine to say goodnight. And then corroborates Pearson. But Mrs. Wray—well, sir, she admits to having had a conversation of some length with Mr. Paradine after the others had gone to bed.”

“What?”

“I don’t think there’s anything in it, sir. In point of fact she needn’t have told me. I just asked her as a matter of form whether she’d seen him again, and she said at once that she had—says she went up to her room and got thinking of something she wanted to discuss with Mr. Paradine, so she went down and had a talk with him. She says it lasted about twenty minutes. It was a very friendly talk, and it had nothing to do with what had been said at dinner. She wouldn’t say any more than that, but I got the impression that she hadn’t expected to meet her husband like that—the butler said none of them expected him—that it upset her a good bit, and that she wanted to talk to her uncle about it.”

“That’s natural enough.”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I thought—but of course you never can tell. I’ve left Manners and Cotton taking statements from the staff. I did Lane the butler myself—you’ve got his statement there. He found the body. Then there’s his wife—she’s the cook, Mrs. Lane—Louisa Holme, housemaid—she’s been there fifteen years—and two young girls, Polly Parsons, under housemaid, and Gladys Huggins, kitchen-maid. None of them in the way of knowing anything, I should say. Miss Holme was waiting at dinner with Lane, but no nearer the study than that. The others wouldn’t have any business there either. All their rooms are in the kitchen wing, on the other side of the dining-room. None of their windows open onto the terrace. The only occupied bedrooms whose windows do look out that way are Mr. Wray’s at one end of the house, more or less over the study, and Mrs. Wray’s at the other end. Mr. Wray would have been in the dining-room, which looks the other way, at the time of Mr. Paradine’s fall. But Mrs. Wray says she woke up with a feeling that she had heard someone cry out. She says she can’t be sure just what she heard because she was dreaming, but she woke up with the feeling that she had heard something. She put on the light and looked at the time, and it was just after twelve. I think there’s very little doubt that she heard Mr. Paradine cry out as he fell.”

Colonel Bostock made a very pronounced grimace.

“Good lord, Vyner, what a girl hears in a dream isn’t evidence!”

“No, sir. Well, that’s all the statements, except the one we got from Miss Brenda Ambrose. I left her to the last, and I didn’t expect to get anything out of her. And now I don’t know whether I did or not.”

Colonel Bostock pricked up his ears.

“How’s that?”

“Well, sir, you’ve got what she’s put her name to. But there’s more to it than that. She’d a kind of a manner with her every time she mentioned her sister-in-law, Mrs. Ambrose—and it’s my opinion she went out of her way to mention her.”

Colonel Bostock whistled. He rummaged out Brenda Ambrose’s statement and went through it.

“Not so much the things she says as the nasty way she says ’em.”

“You’ve got it, sir.”

Colonel Bostock whistled again, softly.

“Well, there was something about that girl Irene—” he said.

Miss Maud Silver was shopping. Even in wartime, and with all the difficulty about coupons, children must be warmly clothed. She was planning to make a jersey and pull-on leggings for her niece Ethel’s youngest, who would be three next month. Ethel would provide two coupons, but that would not be enough. She would have to break in upon her own spring supply. It was of no consequence—her last summer’s dress was perfectly good, and she had plenty of stockings. Of course it was very difficult for the girls who wore those extremely thin silk stockings. Really you had only to look at them to see that they couldn’t be expected to last. Her own sensible hose were a very different matter, ribbed grey wool in winter, and good strong thread in summer. A great deal more durable.

Having settled the matter of the coupons, she had to decide upon the most suitable wool. There were very good shops in Birleton, really quite equal to London. Hornby’s was a very good shop, but of course no one had much choice in wool nowadays. You couldn’t really expect it.

The girl at the wool counter, who looked about fifteen, could only offer Miss Silver a choice between dark grey, vivid magenta, and a very bright emerald green. Miss Silver looked disapprovingly at all three of these shades, and for a time seriously considered the question of a wool substitute—very heavy and cottony, in fact not wool at all, but to be obtained in a number of most pleasing colours. It was very seldom indeed that she found it difficult to make up her mind. With the worst of the winter in front of them, warmth should come first, and yet that green was really too bright—quite blinding. And dark grey for a child of three—oh, dear me, no.

As she stood by the counter in this unwonted state of hesitation, voices reached her from the other side of a display of brightly coloured scarves. The voices were lowered to that sibilant whisper which has a carrying quality all its own.

“The most shocking affair! Mr. Paradine of all people!” That was one voice.

Another, higher and with the suspicion of a lisp, responded eagerly.

“They say it’s murder.”

“It can’t be!”

“They say it is.”

“Oh, no!”

“Well, my dear, Mrs. Curtin—you know, she works for me—”

“Yes?”

“Well, her niece Gladys is kitchenmaid at the Paradines’, and she says all of them are as sure as sure that he’d never have fallen if he hadn’t been pushed.”

“Ssh!”

“Well, I’m only telling you what she said—but of course people do gossip so—”

“Yes, don’t they? It’s dreadful.”

“Isn’t it? Ssh! There’s Lydia Pennington coming this way.”

Miss Silver made up her mind suddenly. Little Roger should have a dark grey suit with collar, cuffs and belt of the emerald green. She gave the order crisply, handed over her card to have the coupons cut off, and turned to look down the length of the department.

Lydia Pennington was coming towards her dressed in a dark grey coat and skirt. The black felt hat which she had just bought was pulled well down over her red curls. The brim threw a shadow across her small, pale face. There was no colour in her cheeks, and her lips were as little made-up as was consistent with her ideas of decency. It is possible that Miss Silver, who had only met her once, might not have known her if it had not been for those whispering voices on the other side of the scarves.

Lydia, on the other hand, would have known Miss Maud Silver anywhere. The tidy, dowdy figure in the black cloth jacket and the elderly fur; the hat with its bunch of purple pansies; the neat mousey hair; the neat, inconspicuous features; the air compounded of mildness and self-possession—these, once seen, had somehow impressed themselves and were immediately recognized.

Miss Silver heard her name, and found her hand being shaken.

“Miss Silver! Do you remember me? No, of course you don’t. But I did meet you about a month ago. You were with Laura Desborough, and she introduced us. She’s a friend of mine. I’m Lydia Pennington.”

Miss Silver gave her little dry cough.

“Indeed I remember you very well, Miss Pennington.”

Lydia said quickly, “What are you doing here?” Her thoughts were racing, racing. The colour had come into her face.

In her driest manner Miss Silver replied, “I am buying wool.”

Lydia’s colour brightened still more. She lowered her voice.

“I didn’t mean that. I meant are you on a case?”

Miss Silver looked at her with attention.

“Oh, no. I am staying with my niece, Mrs. Burkett. Her husband has been transferred to the Birleton branch of his bank. He joined up, you know, but he is not very strong and they have sent him back to his work. So delightful for Ethel. They are such a devoted couple, and they have three children, all boys. They very kindly asked me for Christmas, but I was unable to come to them then, so I have been spending the New Year with them instead.”

As she spoke Miss Silver observed the fluctuation of Miss Pennington’s colour and the manner in which she kept herself rather rigidly turned away from the other shoppers. She was not, therefore, much surprised when Lydia said,

“Miss Silver—could I speak to you—would it be possible?”

“There is a nice tea-room here. We could have a cup of tea.”

“I don’t know—I don’t think so—too many people know me. I just came in to get myself a hat. I hadn’t got a black one, and there’ll be the inquest, and the funeral. Where are you staying? Could I walk there with you?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“We could walk—yes, certainly. My niece has a flat in Birleton Mansions.”

“What!”

“They are quite new and most convenient—a restaurant on the ground floor, and most reasonable. But of course, with the children, my niece will do most of the cooking upstairs. There is a very up-to-date kitchenette. Perhaps you know the flats?”

“I know someone who has one.”

“Then I will just pay for my wool, and we will walk in that direction,” said Miss Silver.

It was perhaps an hour later that Lydia emerged from Mrs. Burkett’s flat, which was No. 12 Birleton Mansions, and stood for a moment on the landing. She could take the lift, or she could walk down. She wasn’t very fond of automatic lifts. She looked past the lift-shaft to the door of No. 12a, and thought how surprising it was that Miss Silver’s niece should be living just across the landing from Mark Paradine. She wondered if there were any possibility that he would be in, and all at once she wanted him to be in so overwhelmingly that she found herself standing on Mark’s threshold and ringing his bell. It would save hours of time. They would be able to talk for once without the family streaming in and out. And he could take her back. He was sure to have to go out to the River House again. Excellent reasons and full of common sense. But the impetus which had taken her across the landing and set her finger on the bell owed nothing to reason.

The bell tinkled somewhere inside the flat. Lydia was sure that he wasn’t going to be in. Why should he be in? It was nearly five o’clock. He was probably having tea with Grace Paradine and Phyllida—Elliot and Albert somewhere on the edge of the party, if they hadn’t been frozen right off it. Or else he was interviewing solicitors, undertakers, and policemen.

She had reached this point of ultimate depression, when the door jerked open and Mark stood there glowering. She hoped that his really outrageous frown was not for her, and received some confirmation of this from an abrupt, “I thought you were another of those damned reporters.” At once she was herself again, cool and self-possessed. She said,

“Thank you, darling—I’m glad I’m not. You look absolutely homicidal. May I come in?”

He stepped away from the door.

“Why did you say that?”

“Why did I say what?”

His voice rasped as he said, “Homicidal.”

Lydia felt quite sick. What had he done to himself? What was he doing, to make him look and speak like this? She slammed the door behind her, leaned against it, and said in a blaze of anger,

“Don’t be such a damned fool!”

They stood glaring at each other, until all at once he shook himself, gave a short hard laugh, and turned back to the room from which he had come.

“All right—that’s that. Do you still want to come in?”

“Yes, I do.”

She walked past him into an untidy, comfortable sitting-room—brown leather chairs, brown curtains, a shabby carpet, walls lined with books, a writing-table, an electric fire. She sat down on the arm of one of the chairs.

“Cut it out!” she said. “I love quarrelling with you, darling, but we haven’t got the time. I want to talk. And do you mind sitting down, because you’re about a mile up in the air and I can’t speak to people who are scowling over my head. It gives me the same feeling as a long-distance call.”

He came unwillingly down to the arm of the opposite chair.

“What do you want? I’m busy, you know. I came back for some papers.”

“All right, I won’t keep you longer than I can help. I won’t keep you at all if you’d rather not.”

“Go on—what is it?”

He wanted her to go with everything in him which was set to resist her. He wanted her to stay with all the unruly storm of emotion against which that resistance had been put up. Deep in his consciousness a voice was calling him what she had called him—a fool—a damned, damned fool.

She said quietly and seriously,

“Mark—will you listen? I do want to talk to you, but I can’t unless you listen—I don’t mean just with your ears, but with your mind.”

He looked at her, nodded, and looked away again.

“All right.”

“You see, at Meadowcroft or at the River House someone is always coming in. You can’t talk like that. I want to talk to you.”

“All right, talk.”

She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the bright red of the fire, two bright glowing bars framed in bronze. She said,

“Mark, this is a frightful thing. The police think it was one of us.”

“Has that only just struck you?”

“No, of course not. But I don’t see any way out of it.”

“Nor do I. So what?”

“We want someone to help us.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked at him now, her eyes brightly intent.

“Well, there’s someone who could help us—right here at this moment, in this building. Her name is Miss Maud Silver, and she’s a detective. I heard about her from Laura Desborough. You won’t know her, but I expect you remember that Chinese Shawl case. Well, she cleared it up. And then last autumn those murders at Vandeleur House, when that woman was caught—what was her name—Simpson. The police had been looking for her for ages. That was her again. She’s absolutely marvellous, and at this moment she’s staying with the people in No. 12. Burkett is her niece.”

Mark’s eyes were as intent as her own, but they were dark and bitter.

“And what do you expect this prodigy to do—find a convenient scapegoat outside the family circle? What a hope!”

Lydia said, “I don’t want scapegoats—I want the truth.”

“Whatever it is?”

“Whatever it is. Don’t you?”

“I—don’t—know—”

She struck her hands together.

“Mark, we’ve got to know! How can we go on if we don’t? It’s a thing that’s got to be cleared up. How can we go on like this—all of us under suspicion—everyone suspecting everyone else—wondering if people are suspecting us—afraid to be natural—afraid to open our mouths. Look at yourself—at me! I used the sort of word one uses, and you went up in smoke. I could have bitten my tongue out the moment I’d said it, and I’d have boxed your ears if I could have reached them when I saw how you took me up. Are we going to have lists of things we mustn’t speak about, words we mustn’t say? Are we going to walk around like a lot of cats on hot bricks? I say, whoever it is, it’s better to know.”

Mark got up, walked over to one of the book-cases, and stood there fingering the books that faced him.

“Whoever it is?” he said. “I don’t know. That’s the sort of thing one says, but when it comes down to brass tacks and you go through the people and wonder which of them it was—well I don’t know. Say it’s murder—say someone pushed him over—say the police find out, or your Miss Silver finds out who did it—who is it to be? Aunt Grace? Frank Ambrose? Brenda? Irene? You? Me? Dicky? Albert Pearson? Elliot? Phyllida? That’s the field. One of them did it. And you say let’s find out—whoever it is. All right, the police find out—your Miss Silver finds out, and the murderer hangs.” He turned and came striding back to her. “One of those ten people hangs—Aunt Grace—Frank—Brenda—Irene—you—me—Dicky— Albert—Elliot—Phyllida. Which is it to be?”

Lydia was standing too. She was as white as a sheet, but she looked up steadily.

“That is what I want to know.”

“You’ve got no favourites? Of course we’d all rather it was Albert, because we’ve never liked him very much. But you can’t hang a man for being a bore, and unfortunately Albert and Elliot are the only people within measurable distance of having an alibi. If you want to know who the police are going to pick on, I’ll tell you—me.”

“Why should they?” Her voice was as steady as her look.

He laughed.

“Because I went back.”

“Why?”

“Why do you suppose?”

“I don’t know, Mark.”

“You’re not being very bright, my dear. You don’t seem to be able to put two and two together. But the police can—it’s the sort of thing they’re good at. They will say I went back to confess to whatever it was Uncle James was hinting about, and from there to saying I pushed him over is as near as makes no difference.”

There was a little pause before she said,

“Do they know you went back?”

His shoulder jerked.

“They will. The Chief Constable was over with Vyner this afternoon. I told them I went out for a walk. A bit of a thin story anyhow, and by this time it’s a million to one the chap who was on duty on the bridge has reported having seen me. He knows me quite well. I believe he said goodnight as I passed him. They’ll make sure I was going back to the River House.”

“You did go there?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Oh, to murder Uncle James of course—what else?”

She caught his arm and shook it.

“Mark, stop being stupid! It’s too dangerous. Don’t you see how dangerous it is?”

He twisted away from her, walked to the end of the room, stood there a moment, and then came back.

She said earnestly,

“Call Miss Silver in. We want help—we can’t manage this alone. Mark, will you listen to me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How is everything left? Are you an executor?”

“Yes—I and Robert Moffat.”

“And the house—who gets the house?”

“I do—the house, and his place in the firm, and the most damnable lot of money. All the motives the police can possibly want.”

She said, “Rubbish!” And then, “That is what I wanted to know. You see, if the house is yours and you’re an executor, there’s nothing to prevent your calling Miss Silver in. You can say she’s an extra secretary. Nobody need know.”

“I won’t play a trick on the family—it might do for the servants. What is she like?”

Suddenly Lydia relaxed. He was going to do it. The stiff, obstinate temper against which she was pushing had given way. It was odd that at this moment she should begin to shake. She laughed a little and said,

“She’s exactly like a governess.”